Keeping with the CSA farm share idea, Charles said at least one of the pieces of art will come in a crate. And, like with the produce you encounter in a CSA share, there's "going to be some stuff you love, some stuff you hate, and some stuff that you come to love that you never thought that you would," said Charles.

Participants will get to meet the artists when they pick up their shares in metro Detroit.

Artists interested in participating must submit an application by Feb. 3, and live in Oakland, Wayne, Macomb or Washtenaw counties. Artists will get a $1000 stipend to create their art for the share.

Charles said they hope to expand the program to Grand Rapids, Flint, Traverse City and Marquette later this year.

Related Content

Dave MacDonald is finishing up his doctorate in music composition at Michigan State University. When his friend asked him to compose a new piece for saxophone, MacDonald said sure, no problem. But there was one catch: he wanted to get paid.

Arts patronage 1.0

MacDonald says getting paid would be hard for a few reasons: There's not a lot of money in classical music, and it's hard to get an arts grant if you're an unknown composer. Plus, he says, arts patrons are hard to come by:

“We hear it coming back from the artists themselves, because obviously they sell their art. So we hear a lot of positive feedback from artists. And we also hear it from the business community that this is a night they count on for sales.”

McCann says so far, several nearby towns have picked up on the art hop idea including Paw-Paw and Plainwell. Normally there are 20 places to visit during art hop. But the March event is a super-sized version and 51 sites will have art on display.